7) 한국어로 번역된 원문은 다음과 같다. “ASSUMING THAT THE ARRAY OF STRUCTURES WHICH CONSTITUTE THE IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS WERE DESIGNED FOR US SPECTATORS, IT ENABLES US TO ASK: WHO BENEFITS FROM OUR NAVIGATING BETWEEN DISPLAYS OF CORPORATE LEGITIMATION AND REPRESENTATIONS OF POWER?” Andrea Fraser, “Procedural Matters: The Art of Michael Asher”, Artforum (Summer 2008), p. 464 (fn. 4).

Perhaps because Moses climbed up Mount Sinai and received two stone tablets on which God’s commandments were written, and the code of Hammruabi is carved into a stele, it became customary that stone, rather than wood or paper, are used to preserve important messages, generation after generation. Texts carved into rock are easily regarded as eternal truths because the words themselves are not readily erased, even by many years of weathering. Moreover, that no one can simply erase, add a playful line or rewrite such texts, they evoke a seriousness to what is written.

Coerced Watching 1: Mount Kumgang

Engraved Rock, Mount Kumgang, North Korea, 2012

Recently, I read about such rocks, inscribed on Mount Kumgang. In April 2012, the North Korean government engraved “OUR ETERNAL LEADER, COMRADE KIM IL-SUNG” on a boulder around Bak-yeon Falls.[1] According to the press, the overall size of the text was five by 37 by .45 meters, making the last Hangeul character “ㅣ,” which is the same as the vowel “i,” easily the size of an adult man. Since 1970, the North Korean government has produced these engraved works wherever there is a large floating population of workers, carving words such as “The great leader Kim Il-sung is always with us” or “Chosun, let’s be proud of the fact that we had Kim Il-sung as our leader, who was the greatest leader in the 5,000 years of our national history.” This work is ongoing.

Coerced Watching 2: Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan

Engraved Rock, Seoul, South Korea, 2007

In many places around Seoul, people can find boulders engraved with the words “LET’S LIVE A RIGHT LIFE.” Additionally, the text: “YOU CAN SEE THE FUTURE WHEN LIVING A RIGHT LIFE” is also engraved on the back of such rocks.[2] After seriously researching this type of engraving I found that these rocks are found not only in Seoul, but all around the country. These carvings on huge boulders are the result of a national project conducted since 1999 by the “Central Committee of the Right-Way-of-Life Movement.” This organization, which is a government-run advocacy group affiliated with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MOPAS), placed more than 300 of these “LET’S LIVE A RIGHT LIFE” stones all around the country with the help of the government finances in all eight provinces. Their goal is ultimately to place 1,000 such stone inscriptions.[3]

The texts selected and engraved by the government are obviously designed to reach individuals and make them think in accordance with the state’s own logic. It is a different matter whether this strategy succeeds or not. According to Michel Foucault, power can modify and discipline individuals through various apparatus. At this point, the concept of the apparatus can be defined as something impelled upon individuals from outside, which is the externalized power that artificializes, manages, and governs beings. These apparatus are imposed upon individuals who then internalized them as beliefs. In the situation of the inscribed boulders, if individuals follow the given texts literally, such controlled bodies have no choice but to accept the given ideology the incumbent regime administers. This happens easily when there is no tension between the beings and the apparatus. Although this is generally acknowledged as a truth in structuralist theory, it should still be taken into account that no matter how terrifying a given system may be, there always remain possibilities, which can be created by ordinary people in their daily life. What is important here is the interconnection between the demand of the text and the possibilities suggested by certain art practices.

The sentence “LET’S LIVE A RIGHT LIFE,” which the government says is devised “to guide” citizens, is grammatically a suggestion, but looks more like a demand to follow, when it is writ in big, black bold font carved into a huge boulder. Such coercion could be tiresome and sometimes even scary for any pedestrian who has eyes to see when they face one of these overwhelming and unilateral texts throughout the nation. No pedestrian can be free then from this persuasive monitoring. That these bullying messages are still being placed around Seoul even in 2012 is somewhat surreal.

Stoning the Stones?

Michael Asher, Engraved Rock, Daejeon, South Korea, 1993

Michael Asher (b. 1943),[4] an American conceptual artist, engraved a stone inscription similar to “LET’S LIVE A RIGHT LIFE” when he visited Korea in 1993. It is an exciting discovery considering that Asher, who is well-known for leaving very few physical remnants of his artistic work, left a permanent work in Daejeon. It was even more interesting to me as I was writing my thesis on his oeuvre.[5] In 1993, as many Koreans will recall, there was an EXPO in Daejeon a city that was advertised as “Science City.” At the same time, an exhibition was held to celebrate the science event. Entitled Future Lies Ahead, the show was curated by Pontus Hulten, who invited 35 artists from all over the world to participate in a museum exhibition and sculpture park. Asher’s participation in the sculpture park, consisted of a simple stone with an inscription, which was, to Koreans, rather banal. The text engraved into the stone is as follows:

“ASSUMING THAT THE ARRAY OF STRUCTURES WHICH CONSTITUTE THE IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS WERE DESIGNED FOR US SPECTATORS, IT ENABLES US TO ASK: WHO BENEFITS FROM OUR NAVIGATING BETWEEN DISPLAYS OF CORPORATE LEGITIMATION AND REPRESENTATIONS OF POWER?”[6]

Last summer when I visited the EXPO Science Park in Daejeon to see this rock, I saw that the organizers where devoted to the goal of “creating a sculpture park,” and the giant sculptures were displayed throughout the park, each with an appropriate placard indicating the name of the artist and the title of the work. However, Asher’s work was not placed with the others; instead, his unimportant looking rock was positioned by a sidewalk entering the sculpture park. Also, unlike the other sculptures, there was no placard. (In fact, as a practice his works have no title, and they are not “Untitled” but actually have no name whatsoever.) Unsurprising in light of his titling, Asher chose the street corner for his work’s placement, rather than the sculpture park, so visitors would pass by it on the way into the sculpture park. This work, like the one’s sponsored by the government, consists of a rock engraved with text in black Ming-style font and a supporting rock. The place where the work is set and the form of the rock follow exactly typical stone inscriptions found throughout Korea. Indeed, Asher’s stone doesn’t look like art, except that text is a bit strange.

When he visited Daejeon in 1993, Asher may have seen other stone inscriptions like “LET’S LIVE A RIGHT LIFE.” Indeed, even on the street corner of the EXPO science park stands a memorial stone inscription announcing “Daeduk Science Town.” This rock, which commemorates facilities just installed or constructed in town, functions as a message-board letting people know the fact, which can then undoubtedly be considered like a signpost. While there is no special interest for Koreans in stone inscriptions because of their familiarity or banality, there is something intriguing, even startling about Asher’s stone engraved with its message written in Korean.

Considering Asher’s past work that had humorously criticized spectacular public sculptures, which colonized public spaces, or as the banal symbols of city marketing, his work in Korea can also be considered in the same context. By using a commonly found form of a stone inscription and providing a more than different text, he used a strategy of throwing stones at the stones, or simply “stoning the stones.” As with much of his work, the stone inscription is never recognized as art at a glance, and its function as message sender overrides any need for the artist’s name. In this respect, this work’s significance lies in critical reflection or awakening, which is aroused by the coerced seeing of locals in ordinary places, rather than by the stone itself. By ending the engraving with a question mark, rather than forming a statement imposing information, he provides pedestrians with an opportunity to critically reflect on it.

In short, Asher’s work criticizes and raises a question to the apparatus of domination, which is coiled up in our daily life and its familiarity, and thereby produces that missing tension, which had disappeared between being and apparatus. What he tries to create is not a great solution or alternative, but an “attitude.” The radical character of his work is urgently needed in Korean art discourses. If people begin questioning the nature of the abundant power apparatus existing under the label of “public art” in this land, this, I think would begin to satisfy Asher’s hope.

Yoonseo Kim, Curator, Hongik University Museum of Art

[1] On April 6, 2012, The Labor Press of the North Korean government, reported that “the texts engraved into the Bak-yeon Fall reflects the will of our military and people, which tries to honor the revolutionary exploits of our great leader Kim Il-sung, who is the Sun and most merciful parent of our nation, for thousands of generations to come” and said “It was engraved with the infallible belief of our military and all people to honor our leader Kim Il-sung.”[2] On another rock underneath, about 30 people’s names who contributed to the project are engraved.[3] According to the National Assembly’s budget policy team’s “Analysis on Financial Balances of Government Departments in the Financial Year,” the “Central Committee of Right-Way-of-Life Movement” received 1 billion won under the name “Public Projects” in 2010, and received 1.5 billion won in 2011, which is an increase of 50% from the year before. The “Ministry of Public Administration and Security” budgeted 1 billion won for the Central Committee in 2012 again. The National Assembly’s budget policy team pointed out that “in the current situation where other non-profit civic organization and many public interest groups experience financial difficulty, it could be seen as an unfair practice that the government keeps budgeting billions of won only to government advocacy groups such as the “Central Committee of Right-Way-of-Life Movement” or the “National Council of Saemaul Undong Movement” without any procedure of public competition or contest.”[4] Asher, regardless of whether he likes this reputation, is well-known as a conceptual artist, or specifically, the first generation of institutional critique artists.[5]Asher”s stone inscription, which had been set in the interior of Daejeon EXPO Science Park since 1993, was moved into the exterior plaza of Daejeon Museum of Art in February 2012.

After attending documenta three times (1997 for Catherine David’s documentaX and in 2002 for Okwui Enwezor’s documenta11) the most obvious assessment is that each incarnation is the expression of its curator. Undeniably dOCUMENTA(13) has the imprint of its organizer, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, which can be defined as socio-politically comprehensive and relevant in scope. Because each documenta is a statement about the moment, while also being something of a timekeeper, each reflects the past, present and future as a continuum that shifts in time and space. Still, the sheer complexity and easy accessibility Christov-Bakargiev brings to bear on issues of political and social import surely makes it a standout among others. If Enwezor’s documenta11 was political and didactic, Christov-Bakargiev’s is ethically illuminating and edifying. dOCUMENTA(13) moves between worlds: nature and science; east and west; war and peace; cruelty and compassion; giving and receiving, and yet the spaces it occupies in Kassel are not fission with tension, but magic and a sense of depth without condescension. To continue the comparison, if David’s was too representative of the establishment and rewrote the history of art in the 20th century, Christov-Bakargiev’s brings together known and new models of contemporary art and includes many less renowned artists from all over the world, as well as the work of people from different disciplines. Moreover, this documenta palpably transcends the opening week as it spreads continuously over its 100 days with events and projects throughout the small hamlet of Kassel and beyond to other parts of this Hessen capital, as well as shifting its location from Kassel to Cairo to Kabul to Banff.

Without going into the difficulty, too much, of taking in an exhibit of this scale in its entirety I will say that it was, more than any previous I attended, sprawling and beyond all human capacity to take in, even a fraction of its contents without unlimited time and the ability to move through time. This is not a detraction, in fact it is one of the many things that makes dOCUMENTA(13) special. With its focus on not so much on the intransigence, but reliable fluctuations between oppositions like east and west, notions of history and the place of the artist in the exchange of goods and services objects and ideas, Christov-Bakargiev managed to bring into being an exhibit that made room for as many ways of working as can be imagined without producing any feeling of competing interests. In this way the show points to how undeniably linked we are in our differences. The focus and organization throughout give respectful space to each and every, with perhaps one exception on the right hand side of the second floor the Neue Gallerie, which felt more like an MFA exhibit than a site at the most exceptional of exhibits. However there are tremendous moments there with the likes of Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades; and Roman Ondak’s Observations.

The most important location in Kassel is perhaps the first floor of Fridericianum, where the exhibition begins. Quickly dispensing with all expectations the entrance gives the viewer little or nothing to hang onto in terms of art or direction with Ryan Gander’s I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorise[sic] (The Invisible Pull), (2012), which is little more than a breeze wafting through these wide open spaces. In effect Gander’s piece clears the mind, allowing the exhibit to take hold. As you ascend the floors of this building, it gets fuller, so by the time you get to the top of the building, where Kader Attia’s The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures, (2012) and Miriam Ghani’s A Brief History of Collapses are situated, the experience is extensive and overwhelming. Still, the core of this exhibition, called The Brain, is located at the back of the building’s first floor in the rotunda, like a hippocampus storing a collective sensibility, where Christov-Bakargiev has gathered numerous objects, like Georgio Morandi’s still life objects to Sam Durant’s pillow, and the 3000-year-old Batrician Princesses, revealing a poetic wellspring of the exhibit, pulsing with ideas. However, the weight of this exhibit is in the overall sense that the works represent something specific to the artist, the place and the exhibit. Most works are not solely semantic, but represent philosophies and sciences, crafts and forms, with each work set down, shown, revealed in its complexity and density, that in turn reflect Christov-Bakargiev’s reputation for being an artists curator, as well as her ideas about commitment to ideas and practices.

Various artists, The Brain, Photo: Roman März

The effect of these elements increases as the viewing accumulates. With the incorporation of science and other biological elements, the body is not divorced from thought, rather it is shown to be one in the same or at least party to each other. The pastoral tone of documenta helps put you in touch with both the undertones of the past as well as the possible and impossible. In an exhaustive yet excellent manner, as a viewer you are sent far afield to see and feel and think as you move through space, especially in the Karlsaue where Christov-Bakargiev made beautiful use of the landscape—reviving it as a place of contemplation and discovery. Importantly, it is in the Karlsaue, which is landscaped according to an alignment of the planets, that one begins to recognize the way bodies, both material and human, relate in space.

From the amazing Janet Cardiff and George Bures’s for a thousand years placed in the woods; to Massimo Bartolini’s simple but hypnotic Untitled (Wave); to Huyghe’s beautiful danger called Untilled; to Anna Marie Maiolino’s crazy and physical Being, Making, Thinking: Encounters in Art as Life; to The Worldly House… “News from Nowhere” with its fantastic setting and storehouse of ideas; to AND AND AND’s overall presence and permutations in the Karlsaue, all these and more bring together the topographical connections embedded or emplaced, as Christov-Bakargiev calls it, in the breadth of the exhibit.

Gunnar Richter, Dealing with the Era of National Socialism—A Regional Study of a Crime in the Final Phase of World War II. Methods of Researching, 1981/2012, Audio slide show, 100 slides, 35 min. Photo: Nils Klinger

One work that struck me as basic to the exhibit was Gunnar Richter’s audio slide show Dealing with the Era of National Socialism (1981),which shows how easily the horrors of war can be elided, and the necessary diligence it takes to reveal them, through systematic research, evidence about how the twelfth century Breitenau Monastery in Guxhausen was transformed over the centuries from a place of worship for Benedictine monks into a concentration camp during World War II and how all traces of its existence were scrubbed from both the public record and the local memory. Moreover, works such as Richter’s in the exhibit as a totality are not discrete. A specific link can be seen between Richter’s work and the three-channel film installation Muster (Rushes) (2012) by Clemens von Wedemeyer, housed in the Hauptbahnhof, where in fact Jews and degenerates were carted off to Breitenau. But that is not the main connection here. The films show three narrative perspectives of what Breitenau was and is: just after the German’s surrendered and the Allied forces arrived on the scene; its days as a reformatory for school girls in the 1970s; and today, as a group of disaffected youth are given a tour of its atrocities. While the intersections between these two works are obvious, there are just as many who are connected on similar terms that are not so clear. But, more than any other works these showed Christov-Bakargiev‘s investment in critically investigating the institution’s history and meaning without abandoning it as something useless and only contemptuous. Through works like Richter’s and von Wedemeyer’s documenta as an institution is shown to be larger than the exhibit, adding to the idea that investigation is useful, knowledge is power and that history and the future are linked.

The Book of Books, the supporting text of dOCUMENTA(13), is introduced by Christov-Bakargiev with a story about a proposed project to move a meteor from Argentina to Kassel. The point of this anecdote is to illustrate that things as well as people have perspectives and places. This idea is essential to dOCUMENTA(13), as is the fact that each work in the exhibit is site-specific to one degree or another. My sense, moving about, was of being a flâneur, seeing my reflection and refraction in everything I observed and likewise being defined by that which I considered. This was the first time I attended when I wasn’t in a group or on duty, so it was to be an art vacation, which was at times nicely reaffirmed by the small houses scattered throughout the park, like resort town by a lake. But a vacation it was not. However enriching an experience like documenta is, it is in a sense a trauma to consider so much at such an intense pace. I begin to think it is that strain, the sense of being pulled apart by ideas and images, balanced by wonder, that in the end is the point of this incarnation of documenta. But really when all is said and done if there is a way to summarize documenta it escapes me. I do know that as it was each time I’ve gone it’s given me a lot to think about and consider, not only about the work I saw, but about my own taste and proclivities; likes and dislikes, standards and sensibilities. The most impressive aspect of the show is the amount of transparency the curator provided into her thoughts and planning for the exhibit. Actually seeing her schematics was inspiring in and of itself, showing that something like this, so grand and comprehensive, is no less mysterious or magical because we get to see into the process.

The video A Brief History of Collapses by Miriam Ghani in many ways embodies the thesis of dOCUMENTA(13). If The Brain of the exhibition its on the ground floor then Ghani’s work is like the cerebral cortex situated on the top floor of the Fredricianum. The video is a tour de force, not because it is grand, in fact it is rather simple—a split screen shows a camera moving through each buildings perhaps following a woman—but because Ghani tackles fundamental questions about perception, experience, history and the meeting of differences. What makes the video enrapturing and surprising at each turn, is how Ghani subtly weaves together the two stories of two places: Dar ul-Aman Palace in Kabul and the Fredricianum in Kassel. These places that are similar yet different, in the telling of their stories; shifting in time between their building, destruction, and current states runs deep and cuts to core issues about the lies and truths we tell ourselves about our histories and our circumstances. Ghani’s work encapsulates Christov-Bakargiev’s project by showing the interconnectivity and distinctions that inform and move rather than divide and determine.

Anyone who has been to art school has been given the assignment to do or draw or make something over and over in order to explore both the object and the method of making as well as the perception of the maker. Which is what make the repetition and care of Aigner’s project all the more stunning, because visually very little changed over the 48 years. Aigner was not some art student wasting time in art school, he was a priest who opposed the Nazi’s and was intern at Dachau where he was given the task of working in the gardens. There he survived and made meaning of that existence by developing new strains of apples. One can only image the focus of mind to continue in the face of Nazi brutality, but he did. From this perspective do Aigner’s works represent hope or denial? Disassociated activity is not necessarily separate from the will to live or survive, rather can be a means of persistence, even resilience.

When I first “saw” Susan Hiller’s work 100 songs for the 100 days of dOCUMENTA (13) in the Neue Gallerie it left me cold. A jukebox in a room, lit like a department store, with the text of each song screened onto the walls and some seating… I dismissed it as poorly placed and uncomfortable, and so I moved on. But then I heard this piece in two other contexts and saw others interacting with it in places like the café at the Hauptbahnhof and the restaurant in the Karlsaue. In these places the work came to life. 100 songs for the 100 days of dOCUMENTA (13) doesn’t act as a sound track for life because its intentions are always obvious in the listening, meaning the listening is active, not passive. Each selected track: peace songs from around the world, creates an instant relationship between listeners in the act of choosing. In all, with Hiller’s publication Book of Songs, which includes the lyrics of all 100 songs, it is one of the best take-aways from the show.

Susan Philipsz sound installation Study for Strings, in the Hauptbahnhof, is one of those rare works that by its nature defies easy description. It is both emotional and historically resonant and therefore merits careful assessment. Based ona composition of Pavel Haas, who wrote the piece at Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, Philipsz’s draws apart his score, isolating the discrete parts of the piece. The work’s core effect is all the more remarkable, because Philipsz has utilized the space and layout of the train station as a staff for scoring and organizing the work like a train timetable. This concretization allows the work to slip in an out of the viewer’s consciousness, repeatedly beckoning us to follow something impossible to follow. Its broken and dispersed sounds are a siren’s call over the exhibit, haunting its consciousness of the exhibit. This work reflects the heart of the exhibit because it directly addresses Kassel and German history directly without softening the anguish of that history.

Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho’s two-screen video News from Nowhere. El Fin del Mundo (2012) is a non-linear narrative about time, making and discovery. In two worlds, set apart by time, two people, a man and a woman make and alter, suggest and redefine materials leaving behind a sense that even in the end wonder does not die. The man set in the “now,” or rather the past, slowly recognizing the game is over, as the world as we know it has come to pass. While the woman set in the “future” shows the restart of what might be called civilization. In the showing we see the first dying out and disappearing, as the second engages in a rule bound world making a kind of archeology accounting of this other past. When considering this work from the perspective of science fiction the question arises what does the future tell us about the present? The materiality in each alludes to a sense that no matter how technological we become we are still in need of contact. Simultaneously the feeling or the need to make something out of nothing proposes that progress is a futile pursuit. That the past and future are one and the same like two rooms on the same floor; it’s only how we look at it.

Independent curator Shin Hyun Jin, is currently a PhD. candidate in Art Criticism at Hongik University, Seoul, where she is researching the effects of neoliberalism on the Korean art scene. Previously she was the curator of the Ssmazie Space Residency Program from 2002-2009. In 1998 she received here MA in Arts Administration from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been involved with numerous art projects in South Korea and in the United States including work as the Program Manager and Development Associate, at the Asian American Arts Centre, NYC (1998-2002), Head of Exhibition Team at SAMUSO: Space for Contemporary Art, Seoul for Platform (2009); TACIT: perform[0], at Doosan Art Center, Seoul (2009); Site Santa Fe: Lucky Number Seven, (2008); Sound Art 201, SSamzie Space, (2008); and Shift and Change II: Alternative Spaces What Now?, SSamzie Space, (2008). Needless to say Shin’s participation in the Korean art scene is deep, and her topic of interest is critical to understanding the dynamics of the Korean art world, which is complicated by social mores and political histories. You can also follow Shin at Blog.naver.con/artfirm. I was interested in speaking with Shin because of her experience as a curator, and an arts administrator working within an international residency program, who was educated in the west. When we sat down in January our conversation focused on the changes in the Korean art scene since the late 90’s and how social work has become part and parcel of art work, due to the structural changes in economies at the end of the last century.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on the conversation we had in January.

Julia Marsh: Previously you worked as a curator for SSamazie Space. Can you say what you see as the greatest loss of this residency program?

Shin Hyun Jin: Yes, there is a feeling inside me wishing I could do some more at that place.

Other than that, I do not think the closing of SSamzie Studio Program is a great loss because SSamzie Space, along with other alternative spaces and residency programs in Korea of the late 90s thru first 10 years of new century had successfully played a role in the development of the globalization of Korean art world. For that matter, SSamzie Space and its residence program are considered critical components of the development of Korean contemporary art practice at the time. The form of its residency program, in particular, was instrumental in such trends. I see the late 90s and first 10 years of 21st century as a period in which the Korean contemporary art scene globalized parallel to the development and adaptation of Korea’s economic neoliberal logic, which dictates principles such as survival of the fittest. In that, residency programs provide artists with honor, feelings of advancement, relevant tools for promotion on a global level and the opportunity to network. SSamzie Space’s studio program was customized for all of these objectives, which allowed SSamzie Space its fame to a certain extent until other bigger, public art institutions performed the same tasks for artists around the time SSamzie Space announced its permanent closing.

JM: And what do you think are the benefits of the artist residency in the age of globalism?

SHJ: In 1998, Nicolas Bourriaud wrote a book entitled, EsthétiqueRelationnelle(Relational Aesthetics). In his book, he stated that he wanted to grasp what was going on in the art practices of the 90s, and pointing out making relations was a common denominator of those practices. In other words, it can be said that creating meaning(s) in art production was shifting from making art objects to inducing it through the process of creating relations, like Rikrit Tribanija’s cooking. Another example, one I personally organized was an exchange project at SSamzie Space entitled “Publicly Speaking,” which included a residency exchange between Korean artists and Art Initiatives of Tokyo. Among the artists included were Kazz Sasaguchi and Hiroharu Mori who’s project “Student Driver” explored the mentality of student drivers’ learning experience of traffic rules compared to that of travelers’ awareness of foreign country’s customs. The project needed administrative assistance from the host institution to recruit volunteer drivers and instructors, not to mention the period of time and a place for the artists to stay while conducting the project.

Another factor that requires residencies in the art world is globalization, and the growing demand for international art events. The need for the presence of international artists here in Korea, combined with the causes that I stated above, has for a long period of time grown at the same time. While the mechanism of art production is in transition in this direction, the residence program is a necessity.

JM: Do these programs support or exploit the circumstances of being an artist in the contemporary climate?

SHJ: That depends on institutions.

JM: You are currently enrolled a PhD candidate in Art Criticism at Hongik University working on ideas around informal economies, especially social entrepreneurs and how contemporary art developed in Korea in relation to the rise of Neoliberalism. How do these ideas differ or merge with what you previously worked on?

SHJ: I worked at two alternative spaces for more than 11 years: Asian American Art Center in New York and SSamzie Space. Asian American Arts Center celebrated its 27th anniversary when I first started working there. I was very lucky and privileged for the opportunity because there I was exposed to the alternative art scenes as well as its history in the United States and the rise and fall of alternative spaces in Korea. I worked at the Asian American Arts Center till 2002 when most New York based alternative spaces were either closing down or changing their organizational structure. I learned that alternative spaces were opening in Korea and got a job at one of them. Then by 2008-09, which was 10 years since the first alternative space was established in Korea, many alternative spaces here either closed down or moved to the fringe areas of Seoul. It seems that it only took 10 years for Korea to follow the same ill-fated course of the alternative space in the US that took 30 something years to occur. Other spaces such as City Racing in England, Nordic Institute of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Sweden, and Rooseum in Malmo, Sweden, organizations performing similar roles to alternative spaces in their respective local art fields, also either changed their institutional structure or closed down between 2005 and 2006, proving institutional changes are global in nature.

After Ssamzie Space closed it was time for me to move on to next phase of my life, career. Before make my decision, I wanted to see the state of art field in terms of society, economy and history so that I could make educated decision. It also meant that I wanted to contemplate what I had done more on an academic level in order to figure out where I fit in. This process naturally led me to study Neo-liberal economy and its policies, economic theories and sociology.

At the same time, I am conducting case studies in the art field; what new approaches are being taken, what do these kinds of art production mean in terms of social and economic development today. The ideas will later become part of my dissertation envisioning the future. As per your question, social entrepreneurship is one of the possible components of art in the future. Smaller government and privatization of social welfare projects are a few of the contingent outcomes of government’s adaptation to Neo-liberalism worldwide. Korea is no exception. Starting from the Roh Moohyun administration (2003-08), organization apparatuses that perform public service handed that role over to private organizations and companies. Even social welfare became a subject that individuals and corporations had to take care of. These trends coincided with the government’s policy to promote social entrepreneurs by providing a two or three year salary subsidy, while their companies were obliged to create social services that ensured profits. The same policy applied to cultural institutions that included social good. However, the policy presented a dilemma. In the 60s the economist W.J. Baumol hypothesized that in cultural economics a productivity lag is bound to cause a long-run increase in the real cost of the performing arts.

This theory became a justification for public subsidies, both in Korea and in the US for The National Endowment for the Arts, and was often cited by advocates for the arts since 1965. If his theory is still reflective of economic conditions and the market, social entrepreneurship in the arts is oxymoronic. Or conversely, while we hear about the end of Capitalism, and Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that herald such social change are imminent, success of social entrepreneurship may indicate the direction of social change in which involvement of individuals become necessary instead of being managed by government or representatives. I am not that fond of a direction that insist that individuals must be responsible for their own welfare even though they are paying high rate taxes to government to take care of the people.

I would be more supportive only, if DIY welfare structure meant less taxation. I do not know if there is a countervailing logic that such a direction is beneficial for humankind yet. Time will tell.

JM: How do you think the differing forces of business and aesthetics influence the art world in Korea, currently and in the decades since democratization in Korea?

SHJ: Characteristics of this influence over a majority of art practices in this period can be connected to theories of labor. My argument to connect art and theory of labor is limited to experimental, conceptual art practices that often involved with installation, project-based practices, and relational art.

In 1991, Maurizio Lazzarato wrote a paper entitled, “Immaterial Labor,” in which he argued changes in the labor conditions of the post-industrial era show how the simple manual labor style of the previous industrial era were replaced by more complicated, subjective and flexible methods due to the production mechanism’s focus shifting to managing customer relations and reflecting on collected data through the relation fed back by their production. This caused changes to the personality of laborers into populations that constitute the subjective, networking, self-promoting, and individualistic. People slowly adapted to such traits that the new economic system required.

If production today is directly the production of a social relation, then the “raw material” of immaterial labor is subjectivity and the “ideological” environment in which this subjectivity lives and reproduces.[1]

This phenomenon has a great resemblance to the art practices of relational aesthetics, which is the term Bourriaud coined to define certain art practice of the 90s. Audiences assume the role of feeding data to complete an artist’s project, while the social relation, the participating audience, experience becomes the foundation of the data. In this sense, economic theory influenced the art practice of the time.

Kim Heejin is the current director of Pool (formerly know as Alternative Space Pool) since 2010. Her curatorial projects include Unconquered: Critical Visions from South Korea at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2009); John Bock: 2 handbags in a pickle on view simultaneously at Arko Art Center and Insa Art Space (ISA) (2008); Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision at the New Museum, New York City and, ISA Seoul (2007-08). Most recently she curated 2012 pool <Local Studies and Art Series>: “Gunsan Report : Operators of Survival and Fantasy” and From Blank Pages in collaboration with Reuben Keehan, also at Pool.Before joining Pool Kim was the director of Insa Art Space (2006-09). I first met Kim while looking at the Jon Bock exhibit of video works housed at ISA. Kim was very kind and invited me to tour the upstairs to the space where ISA had amassed and housed an archive of Korean artists’ documentation and their works. One thing was clear from my conversation with her that day: she was critical and direct. She spoke was without guile and more importantly she was a fierce advocate for good and meaningful art. Kim’s opinions are illuminating and crucial to any understanding of the whole of Korean culture, let alone the Korean art scene. When we sat down on a very cold day last winter she jumped right in, speaking about the interwoven problematic of internationalism and the regional context faced by both artists and culture.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on the conversation we had last winter.

Julia Marsh: Most of your research and curating has involved alternative spaces. In Korea how is that kind of space defined and utilized as a platform of culture?

Kim Heejin: For people participate in art and culture once in a while in Korean society alternative spaces are defined as a gateway for rising artists, who make “experimental and nonprofit” artworks.

Watching movies once a month, or buying expensive theater, musical or performance art tickets for the year may be the only culture Koreans participate in. This happens, not because their lack of interest, but because people do not have time or experience with various types of culture and art; in reality, Korean society is already too busy resolving the problems it has now, beyond building up easy access for culture and art. There is then no space for “culture and art.” It would be great if there were viewers who participate in culture and appreciate it at the very least as a “consumer good,” “entertainment” or “aesthetic experience.”

However, people in the art world and the culture in general know about the existence and importance of “alternative spaces.” This achievement is possible because it is not necessary to understand the evolution of art and its various strategies. The “existence” of alternative spaces is understood as “general alternative culture” like experimental films and indie music, viewers consider its’ value as “experimental” “young” “ideal” “active,” etc.; a place of superficial and romantic liberalism. These same viewers have grown tired of subjects like the “autonomy” of the anti-establishment minority, “criticism and discussion” of anti-consumerism and “independence” based on colonialism, which contain the value of socio-political ideology.

As a person directing an alternative space, I am not satisfied with the perspective of alternative spaces by experts: intellectuals and so-called art lovers. However, this is not a problem of enlightenment; it is about showing character and the perspective of each space and creating spaces for experience. The space that has a specific character is easily remembered and meets the approval of audiences, supporters, and corporation partners who associate with the concept of each space. Alternative spaces cannot be understood as democratic by a wide range of people and in the frame of public responsibility, because they are corporate bodies, which are semi-public or individual business.

JM: Do you think there is anything unique about it’s presence in Korea? How do artists think of these spaces?

KHJ: Korean society seems very active and organized, but the community has a very simple structure and it is institutionalized to allow for the predictable variables of the corporation. The combination of a few elements, such as anti-communist national security, economic growth, nationalism, Confucianism, militarism, wealth, personal connections/educational background determines the majority, or mainstream. The social structure has not changed that much as each generation changes, since these boundaries have been reinforced to strain and isolate or loosen relations. When the Western art world sees Korean alternative spaces, what gets missed is the context or region. Alternative for art spaces in Korea does not mean only liberal. The real life of each region is subordinated to politics, so people who talk about “alternative” in the art world automatically are placed in a minority, which leads them to have a sensitive understanding of the current political administration. In reality, nonprofit alternative spaces in Korea operate within the social political position of their regional contexts, not under the its expected pretexts.

The second characteristic is the “peripheral” in the regional context.

As previously stated, majority, or mainstream strength relies on old and infirm values that make it appear that they number in the many, but actually they are a minority of the people. These tired values are consequently not affective on the many. Therefore, there are many people who support minority alternatives. Then, how to accept “minority” as a position of otherness for each of us is crucial. Korean modern history was heartless to the “minority position.” The elimination of the minority insured the survival of the rest. Everyone lived with the fear of guilt by association. The collective fear caused people to hesitate to be in the “periphery.” It is then a choice for each of us to be involved or not to be involved in the “periphery.”

Artists’ opinions on “Art Space POOL,” where I work, are various and their opinions depend on their social, political, alternative, awareness of the minority. However, I have no objection to the fact that the space has been faithful to its duty as a place for artists who are marginalized in society and as a place for those artists who participate in that reality. In other words, POOL was a place for artists who were willing to live the reality of this position and place, and not dependent on any theory of making art. I think alternative art spaces in general are positioned as places that reveal the artist’s stance, a differentiation from co-called “trendy” or “popular,” in short, “artists with ideas.”

Also, the space is absolutely a gateway for the artists who oppose the art market which is subordinated to an illogical exhibition system and consumerism, art production dependent on market opportunism, and consumptive production without communication.

JM: Can you speak to the ideological aspects of exhibition and art making in Korea?

KHJ: I am not sure about which ideological aspects you are referring to. If you mean political ideological aspects, as there is no chance to meet artists who have different opinions, which is like people who have different “thoughts” cannot be friends. Even though the artist who has a firm political ideology, their artwork itself is created with a mixture of many different ideologies: artwork = ideology doesn’t make sense.

The exhibition is made in a process of organic fusion between artist and exhibition manager, plus, they all have to face the enormous conditions of the system, budget, space, time, people and unforeseen affects. Even after all those things are met, the “exhibition experience” can be changed and open differently depending on the influence of other variables.

JM: How do you feel the interaction between Korea and the global art world has changed in the last 10 or 15 years?

KHJ: Of course, the number has increased and method is diversified, naturally. The conditions of the so-called horizontal relationship and the equality of collaboration have been much improved. What I am worried about is not the quantitative, visible index, but the problem of mutual realization, which is the hidden side of this paradigm. For example, the toadying attitude towards the West is far from being stamped out. The media has worsened this situation. I feel a sense of shame when the media acts hastily on a very, small exhibitions in the countryside of foreign countries, or superficial exhibitions that have no impact, or rating artists depending on overseas experiences. It seems like the media leads with this obsequious attitude and also sets the scene for hectic reproduction. Since the economies of North America and Europe are faltering, the essence of toadyism is being redefined as a regressiveorientalism that is a stubborn expression about the West. The worst part is the colonialist attitude towards many other regions. Consciousness is always the critical point.

JM: What are the challenges facing Korean artists today in contrast to the past?

KHJ: The main challenge is the method of operating in the market and the overall system. “System” here means not only the public system, but includes planning, criticism, and distribution. Artists are very good at managing the environment for making art, however as individuals they are actually very weak in managing the various systems of the artworld. The backwardness art education curriculum and the lack of practical experience of the artists has been pointed out, so I think the current environment, which was created by the “system” in the late 90s, needs time to develop. The more serious problem we have is the system is unprofessional and corrupt, therefore, artists cannot learn from their experiences in this system. Without experts in society, appropriate methods are being ignored for expediency. We cannot blame this on the artists.

As I stated earlier, we have to believe that we are equal players outside of Korea and accept respect individuals, while balancing the challenge and coexistence of these counterparts. The problem of language comes after that.

JM: What role does globalism take in the scope of art making in Korea? How would you describe how Korean artists think about this dynamic?

KHJ: Globalism has been referenced many times but we are far from feeling that we are in the same playground. In reality, it is not the problem of the individual, rather it is the influence of the socio-political situation, like the media and government. Since our government often lies to foreign countries, how could people feel easy about globalism? With transparent duplicity, they bury their heads, ostrich-like, in the sand. Is it globalism when you do an exhibition in another country? Does It mean globalism if you have a dinner with non-Korean artists in Korea? There are many artists from other countries living in Korea for years but have found creating a relationship with the local scene in Korea doesn’t work well. Globalism is not affecting projects, artworks by individual artists and moreover the direction of the art world in Korea.

Opening a global gateway within the institutional system is good, but it has to unfold with a qualitative improvement, and not numerical value any more. How could you expect globalism to impact artwork since we lack human resources in the field, such as professional translator and coordinators who can makes statements about their thoughts?

JM: From our earlier conversation I understand you have a particular interest in Doorung movement, which was active alongside the Minjung movements of the 1980s. What kind of impact did these movements have on artistic practices then and now?

Can you elaborate on the differences between the two, but more specifically your point of interest in Doorung as a methodology?

KHJ: There is no frame on how Doorung influenced perspectives on art in the 80s and the present. Because Doorung movement was already active outside art circles, there is no archive or criticism in the art world; even if there are, there will be differences of opinions on Doorung between the art scene and art historians. Therefore, when you asked me about the methodology of Doorung, there may not be any innovative, experimental formation or radical attempt that will be accepted extraordinarily by the Korean art historians. The few archives that I have show their methodology is not organized well and it arises from many ways of living.

I would like to point out the Korean art circle’s narrow-minded categorization and hypocrisy because they consider Doorung a social movement, not “Art” just because Doorung gave up on authorship. Additionally, I highly respect Doorung’s suggestion that culture can move beyond class and their ideas about role models, like the worker who reforms society or the shaman who purifies, at a time when our society was separated clearly between classes like Artist-Citizen-Worker. They were fighting for a sense of identity as artists, remaining aloof about the method of making these works, while trying to build up a practice and theory to communicate with the people in the role of citizen and workers. There was also Minjung Misul (Korean Folk Art), which was already the artists’ democratization movement and did not represent only one method of making or one small group. Therefore, Doorung is the part of Minjung Misul. In my opinion, Doorung is the movement that took part on the edges of the outskirts, in low places, existing hidden from sight in Minjung Misul. The most realistic Realism? For many artists who tend towards realism, Doorung is perhaps the movement that possesses the already beautiful and extraordinary. So how can you evaluate it by only the outcomes in artworks?

For 21st Century cultural producers, both “work” and “life” are still miserable, however these problems and issues are not a focal point in the general society, let alone for labor relations. Of course Doorung, which was concerned early on with work and life on the ground, which can be a reference for our current situation. For people who are concerned about the “reality” of work and life, Doorung has been highly esteemed even though they had a different methodology and strategy, organization.

JM: In our earlier conversation you mentioned that POOL is doing outreach in the provinces. Can you discuss these plans and how POOL’s interaction is important to both partners?

KHJ: As I wrote in the proposal for Gunsan Report: “People Who Manage to Survive and Fantasy”(www.altpool.org), POOL has been working on the “Area Study and Art” series since the 1990s. To describe this project by the geographic region is pleasing perhaps, so here it is: it started from Sungnam to the Middle East, Balkan, and Cairo and continued to Gunsan. To run this specialized public project, research and study started when the conditions allowed without any systematic plan. Why we did this is very simple, and my ideas are very realistic. The most selfish reason is to extend and add introspection to my existence, and the next is to meet and learn from others. In other words, to communicate beyond isolation, and to create a wide view of the world through the place we are living and the spatial theory from other regions.

As to whether the project has been successful with local residents can only come from the recognition that the artists’ contributions are weak although reasonable, expressive, introspective, and visionary, which are things that artists are best at. The problems that local residents have have to be solved between them and their local politicians. The artists have a role to show both to the government and local residents by responding and expressing their perspective of the society, history and sentiment so these groups can maybe see better.

Although this was a group show I have little to say about Sulki & Min, or Sungmin Hong’s work, as they were nearly as compelling or interesting to me the night I happened to find myself in Gallery Loop. Because my presence there was a fluke, I was not focused on the whole show and just followed my eyes to what was attractive in that moment. I was drawn to Dongchun Yoon’s graphic, fun but very serious works. Yoon’s Donald Sultan-like graphics, maps and dot patterns in eye popping colors and vibrating arrangements, play with light and perception, quickly got me thinking about how he make his images. After a brief inspection it was, however, clear that what was reflecting back at me was more that formal, but rather a critique of the conditions in the relationship between South Korea and United States as they pertain to Jeju Island. In particular, “Gurumbi-43 Holes” (2012) is so formal, fantastic and frightening as its content slowly unfolds as scatter shot. The impact of Yoon’s work is made possible by his simple and surprising mastery of his mediums and his delicacy of composition. This is obvious in the “Junction 2” (2012), which shows Korea to be a paper cutout peeling away from a blue field. Both poetic and precise the metaphor is palpable, yet inviting. Another good example, “Junction 1” (2012), speaks to the direct and perhaps ridiculous nature of conflict, which depicts five pairs of guns, shown in profile, pointed nose to nose, in halftone with a red screen on the left and blue on the right. This image, like his other works, induces us with eye-popping visuals that are followed closely with a solid punch. Making good art from political strife is not an easy task. That Yoon’s works demonstrate this with such seeming ease and engaging manner is the mark of both a skilled artist and consummate works.

When I walked into One and J. Gallery I was pleasantly surprised by the lovely assemblages by Joongho Yum. It immediately struck me that each arrangement reflected different artists: Raymond Petition, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Luc Tuymans, Jasper Johns, even Jimmie Durham, as though each arranged were a homage to earlier, better times of art making. This was just my idea, which the show’s title and in fact the concept of Yum’s work makes clear I am free to conjure. However, as my idea above shows taste garners bias. This show purports to be the result of a conversation of tastes and choices. The works were subjected to a selection process that started with Yum, but ends with five other artists responding to his images in their own way. However, by giving his work over and accepting the results, the artist looks to frame this making as the subject, so rather than in each object or image, the choosing of others is the locus of his intentions and therefore the art, much like a curator who controls an exhibition outcome. In this game each participant brought to bear their own formal, poetic and perhaps political positions that occupy the spaces that exist between aesthetics and concepts, objects and reflections. Although the word taste is used here in the play between Yum and the other artists, a better word might be style, in that what results is a stylistic interpretation, one that reflects preference, not knowledge. Because taste is the domain of the aficionado or appraiser, the informed, the use of the word here is ambiguous in the outcome. What is important here is how choice belies intent. But intent cannot be supplanted by choice alone. However nice looking or even interesting, in Yum’s work intent, the cornerstone of art making, goes off course, becoming tangled in the inclinations of others.